NATO is continuing its barrage of the Libyan capital, with no sign there will be any let-up until Colonel Muammar Gaddafi goes. Western and Arab countries are showing their support for the Libyan opposition by pledging more money.

­­The rebels say they need $3 billion over the next several months to pay salaries and buy supplies.

Although the rebels have managed to get financing from their first oil exports to the US, writer and filmmaker Patrick Henningsen believes the oil business coming out of Libya is not the main driver of this NATO operation.

“We are talking about a total restructuring of the state,” he said. “The rebels drew up plans way back in March to have their own oil company to replace the Libyan national oil company, and their own national bank.”

The unfreezing of Libyan assets to be given to the opposition is taking longer than expected, but Henningsen says there are bigger issues.

“I think a bigger question is that the Libyan national bank has one of the highest per capita gold reserves of any state bank in the world. I think the only country that has a higher per capita gold reserve is Lebanon,” he said. “What Gaddafi might have stuffed away in Swiss bank account or a collection of Swiss bank accounts is miniscule compared to the state assets in terms of gold and oil that Libya possesses. And this has really been the game all along.”

Henningsen claims this operation is about making Libya fold into the globalist umbrella, converting the nation to a more privatized one.

“Libya is the only country that voted not to join Africom, which is the US’s strategic African command project,” he concluded. “And that is one of the reasons why they are getting the blood-end of the hammer from NATO right now.”